


God Help the Outcasts

by idigam



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Blind Character, Developing Friendships, Gen, Laboratories, Monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26332015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idigam/pseuds/idigam
Summary: Agent Logan Fox ended up on the wrong side of a chemical attack and would have been discharged from the Mobile Task Forces if a containment breach hadn't resulted in a shy anxious and incredibly dangerous being deciding he's their new security blanket.
Relationships: SCP-096 & MTF Agent
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41





	1. Everyday Magic

Logan ran a hand through his floppy wet hair, the humid warmth of the shower still clinging to his skin and the pleasant ache of a weight lifting settling into his muscles. Finding his toothpaste and toothbrush working the paste into a froth as he cleans his teeth and runs a sensitive finger over his cheek and jaw measuring the stubble. He’ll need to shave soon, the finger traces the edge of the puckered yet too smooth scar tissue beneath his left eye a daily ritual along with measuring stubble, one born of morbid fascination rather then practicality. Spitting the froth out into the sink and beginning to floss, reaching for where his deodorant he hesitates a moment, selecting the unscented powder next to it and then calling out to his bunk-mate. “Rick would you mind handing me the cologne?”

Rick comes up behind him and places a bottle in his hand, “sandalwood alright?” Logan nods gratefully applying a splash to his wrists and neck. “I keep telling them they should just let me set up inside the containment zone. Make everything easier for everyone.” He can hear Rick scoff to his right, “that would require Dr. Lee to take the stick out of his ass.” Logan can’t help but smile, it’s been well over a year now, long enough to get used to his new normal. “He’s just mad he couldn’t figure out how to kill Shy before our overlords decided it wasn’t worth it to keep trying.” Rick’s smile gets tight, “I still can’t believe you named it.” Logan just shrugs, he’s aware that at this point he could easily be described as a weirdo, but it’s not like him making his work feel a little more normal is the weirdest thing here, even among the personnel.

Rick and Logan talk for as long as they can, the noise making it easier for Logan to navigate the halls. Though they aren’t exactly difficult to navigate Foundation sites aren’t exactly crowded and in a rare show of humanity the higher ups decided to add braille to the navigation signs. Though by now Logan has long learned the routes to and from most places around the facility. He can here Rick sigh at the next juncture, “here’s where I leave, I’m on emergency duty outside one seven three’s cell today.” Logan winces, “yeesh, didn’t you guys just clean it?” Rick laughs, “feels like it but it was a week ago, bastard thing just keeps shitting itself. Besides couldn’t have been any worse than bath time for your assignment?” At that Logan laughs genuinely, it’s a strange sound in any of these facilities outside of the canteen, “nah, he just gets pouty whenever we do that.” Even without being able to see it Logan can imagine the look of incredulity being sent his way. “Anyway I’m heading out.”

Logan turns right then left, timing his steps and listening to the echo of his boots on the linoleum floors of the facility, when needed he’ll make a click to make sure he isn’t drifting too close the wall. “Yo Logan! It five already?” The guard yells out telling him exactly where the door is, “yep.” He holds up a DVD case, “got something special to try out today.” The other guards shift a bit, which means that Doctor Lee just arrived. “Agent Fox this is not a recreational event meant for entertainment,” Doctor Lee’s voice is cold and clipped but professional. Logan rolls his shoulders turning towards the direction of the voice, “I’m aware Doc, but, if memory serves the bosses are curious to find out the range of his emotional ability. Only one way to test that and it’s stimuli yeah?”

He can hear the precise footsteps of Doctor Lee’s doc Martins approach him and Logan can feel the shift of air that accompanies a body passing close by him. There’s a mechanical tone and metallic thunk, the sounds of Doctor Lee unlocking the containment cell. “ _IT_ ” the Doctor says with emphasis “is not human, you need to remember that.” Logan walks past him and into the annex between the main hall and the containment cell that was his destination.

It’s easy to remember that he isn’t human, but it’s much harder to think he’s not a person when one’s been the shoulder he cries on. The door behind him closes and another metallic thunk signals the opening into the cell proper. The cool stale air of it wafts out. Not with the bitter tang of neglect that had accompanied it the first time he came here. The steady beat of large feet pacing stops when he steps into the cell. “Hey there bud, brought something special for you today.” There’s a swift couple of footsteps as zero nine six walks over to him, the distressed mumbling changing to a content hum. Logan smiles “yeah, happy to see you too.” There’s a thud of an impact as the large slender body slumps backwards and he’s pulled into an embrace, long arms folding around him and a head bigger than his is buried in his shoulder. “Hey; hey, I wish this was just a social call but I brought something for you.” A curious whistle is his only reply, “you guys got the projector set up?”

Above them there’s an affirmative and the sound of the main menu for _Fellowship of the Ring_ starts. Shy, turns a bit dragging Logan along for the ride until he’s left sitting in Shy’s lap, the long spindly legs folded around his. “Lets see if you like this. One of my favorites.”

Shy it turns out seems to respond well, making vocalizations of awe and happy whistles over the course of it. Though the Ring Wraith’s ambush scene results in a sharp yelp and Shy buries his head into Logan’s shoulder. Logan can’t help the small laugh that escapes his lips, “you’ve taken on at least eight heavily armed soldiers shooting at you with anti-tank rounds but you’re scared of ghosts in a movie?” An embarrassed whine is the only response he gets. Logan shakes his head, “alright notes to add to the file ‘no horror movies.’”

Movie night is declared a success and there’s an excited buzz of chatter from the egg heads as they go on about the new sounds made by zero nine six, and the timid behavior displayed during ‘certain stimuli.’ Logan only half-listens, offering responses only when asked. He’s known how the Foundation operates for years, how things work around here, the cold pragmatism of it. Still stings to know he’s an asset only because he’s the only person who can waltz into Shy’s containment cell without ending up puree, the only reason he wasn’t amnestisized and dumped into the world. Probably to find his conclusion at the bottom of a bottle or the end of a needle, galling that the only person who seems to like being around him with no trace of pity isn’t actually human. That this person is who’s being discussed like an interesting bug, a curiosity or scientific freak. Well except Doctor Lee, he talks about Shy like he’s an active bomb or rabid tiger, something that should be rendered inert, shot, neutralized, buried, and forgotten.

The world’s a bastard place if the Foundation is the kindest possible option for them. Not a place with mercy for the lost anomalies and broken soldiers.


	2. Death and Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did Logan end up in the position he did?

The end of Logan Fox’s life was on an inappropriately nice day. The weather was mild as their convoy moved across the lonely road twisting through the Rockies. It should have been an average day, Logan and the rest of his squad, nominally attached to Tau-9 they were bringing an egg head along with some old dusty manuscript. Everything was going smoothly with just enough hiccups to be a pain in the ass, in other words, not perfect enough to be too perfect. Just the right amount of mayhem that guards were lowered. Soldiers in combat are naturally a superstitious lot. Soldiers dealing with actual supernatural fuckery? Ask a stupid question.

Everything went pear-shaped approaching the last third of the leg. In the absolute perfect place to hit where help would be most difficult. It has all the hallmarks of an Insurgency sting. The storm drain on the side of the road had an IED perfectly designed to waste their APC’s tires. Dazed the occupants started to get out of the carrier. That’s when the second wave of the attack hit, later the forensics and the docs investigating would point to a combination of chlorine gas and an aerosolized compound similar to the caustic fluids produced by one-o-six. Nasty stuff, melted the lungs of the first three people out. Logan was fast enough to make it to the dispersal device. Luckily the mix was heavy so the device was within a distance one could reach at a full sprint. He shot the thing up enough that it sputtered to a halt in the middle of the road. Logan fired into the oncoming vehicles, his vision blurring more and more with each passing second, portions of his field of view eaten away by blackness like celluloid warping and bubbling on a too hot projector. Still he kept a cover fire. He was a mobile task force soldier, and agent of the Foundation sworn to service and trained for whatever job was needed.

He wouldn’t find out how the battle went until long after the sounds of gunshots had faded and his sense of smell was able to detect the acrid tang of spent gunpowder, the taste of it settling in the back of his throat. Chasing out the lingering remains of the Insurgency’s chemical weapon. They’d pushed the bastards back, though that spoke less to their own skill and more to the Insurgency being misinformed as to their cargo. Apparently a non-anomalous book containing info on the anomalous wasn’t quite the prize they’d hoped. Or as they would find later, what they’d been lead to believe they’d find. Barely a consolation prize to the people who’d lost their lives that day. One researcher and five soldiers, still Logan thought, the egg-head deserved a warrior’s elegy, the honors of his squad. He’d been shot but survived long enough to put a bullet through one of the enemy’s field leaders. Lucky shot more than anything given the ceramic chitin growing out of the bastard.

The Insurgency corpses would be as much toys for the people back at base as whatever secrets and maps were hidden in that first edition Newton they’d been sent for. The weather continued it’s horrifically pleasant late summer trend the next day when the doctors announced the damage report to Logan, bandaged up in the medical bay’s bed. “We’re sorry to inform you Agent Fox; that the damage was too extensive. The agent has already reacted with the skin around the eyes and elements of it managed to damage all the way to the optic nerves not just the cornea.” Professional, and clear, just enough jargon to blunt the blow. The empty darkness that engulfed Logan now would be his future. Not black, black was a specific register of light forming the appropriate signals in the brain. This was an absence, the removal of one of his brain’s means of making sense of the world and his mind’s desperate struggle to come to grips with that.

They’d gone through the motions with it. Physical therapy to get him on his feet and teach him to navigate his surroundings. Setting him up with someone on the outside who can keep up with him. This of course means discharge, being given amnestics and being left maimed and alone in the world without even the consolation of the truth of how he came to be so. This was the first time Logan Fox really thought about the Foundation’s methods. He’d sworn to them loyalty and service. He wouldn’t betray that oath, but the Foundation didn’t see that, no they weren’t influenced by rosy concepts like sentimentality, Logan was a liability to them. A risk that they cooly and pragmatically analyzed, and came to what was no doubt, the most ‘humane’ way to keep their security.

Being without sight in a hospital bed thinking on this while he waited the inevitable discharge led to strange avenues of thought. Morbid pondering on the nature of the mind. The brain, seat of personality, thought, instinct, and consciousness, the source of everything we are, our philosophy and ideology, our hopes, goals, fears and ideals. Is a helpless lump of cells completely reliant on the senses to feed it information and adhere to it’s dictates. Something people don’t tend to consider unless suddenly forced to confront that self same delusion that all humanity must live. A delusion that keeps us sane and able to move.

It was in the middle of that cheery line of downward momentum that the second bit of engineered misfortune would strike the Foundation and the site in which Logan was staying. A containment breach through at least half the site. Attachments sent in an internal memo containing a picture of zero nine six’s face. An open door into one seven three’s containment cell. Instances of zero zero eight and zero four nine’s projects let loose into the facility. Hell broke loose, all so conveniently timed. Especially if one was a doctor about to be audited by the ethics committee. The havoc resulting engulfing the site, D-class using the opportunity to make a break for it, guards trying to secure containment and protect anyone in need of it. Researches broke into those who could provide aid and those who needed to be secured.

Logan was still confined to a bed when the alarms went off, it took every ounce of self control he had not to leap out of his bed and charge down the halls to try and save people. Control the situation, mitigate the damage, but what could he do? Maybe in a few months, rigorous training to navigate the site he could help get people to safety. It was in this well of self pity that Logan found himself in when the plan for his life post attack was upended and something far more improvised took priority. The door crashed open and slammed shut only the broken in with a deafening crack, there was a brief scream followed by a thud and the sickening squelch of something cleaving into flesh.

Sitting still and silent Logan is tensed, ready to lash out and or run from whatever just came in. That is until the sounds of small broken sobs starts from the corner of the medical station. The idea that maybe whoever tried to hide in with him could be injured supersedes anything else. “Hey,” at the sound of his voice, cracked and quiet is still enough to get the attention of the sobbing person who’s sobs are cut off with a hiccup. “You alright?” The only response is a low despairing moan. Alright whoever’s here is still alive, definitely in a lot of pain though. He slowly gets closer to them, they’ve started mumbling in distress, and probably panic, “that’s good, keep talking. I can’t see but if you keep talking I’ll get to you.”

They stop when Logan knows he’s right in front of them. Sticky wet warmth seeps through the knees of his pants. Logan presses forward choosing not to think about it. He can hear a sliding next to him, something dragging through the what’s probably blood, and he puts a slow cautious hand on the limb. Feeling the warm clammy skin underneath his fingers the corded muscle beneath the skin, the muscle bunches and releases in reaction to the touch. The reaction time doesn’t seem slowed so they probably aren’t the sole owner to the blood. The quiet lingers while Logan explores the body of this person checking as much as he can for injury. The pause is short lived before too long arms tipped with something that feels more like talons than fingers he freezes as a face much larger than his buries itself in his shoulder and whoever they are begins sobbing again. He realizes this isn’t a human it’s a skip. More importantly he can guess which skip.

He can hear a voice pronounce ‘clear’ followed by an echoed ‘clear’ from further down the hall. “Buddy those are some people who are gonna help, I’m gonna call them over.” Zero nine six’s files said that it doesn’t appear to be sapient but not wanting to accidentally set it off by screaming Logan opts to talk to it like it’s a traumatized person. “In hear, active skip, eyes down,” he calls over his shoulder feeling zero nine six tighten it’s grip on him a moment he starts to rub circles in its back, feeling the prominent vertebra of its spine. When he can hear the heavy boots of the mobile task force he holds up a hand feeling zero nine six stiffen again and start to raise it’s head he tightens his hold just enough to halt the raise. “No no, it’s okay, they’re here to help. They’re gonna make sure we’re safe. He can hear the harsh cursing from the MTF agents behind him and he grunts in frustration gesturing with his hand. “Give me the hood” he hisses, he can hear some hushed debate before one of them reluctantly approaches, “I hope you know what you’re doing Fox.” Exhaling with relief when he feels the hood in his hand he offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “I’m gonna put this on you now, and we can take a nice easy walk back to your place.”

At first zero nine six continues as the dossier suggests it would that is until the other task force operatives tried to separate him from zero nine six and the other began to make the distressed noises similar to when it’s face is seen. The agents decided to let Logan accompany the skip to its containment cell lest the placid calm break. A strange train forming through the site halls, zero nine six holding Logan’s hand as Logan is guided in turn by another of the MTF agents. Outside the cell it tenses and seems to become distressed again. “Hey hey, buddy I’ll uh, I’ll visit okay? How’s that sound? But I need to go get cleaned up yeah? Can’t walk around smelling like bad blood and sweat.” Zero nine six tenses tightening its grip on his hand possessively before being lead to containment.

“I’ll escort you back to medical,” the other agent mentions a certain amount of amusement in his voice. “Thanks, I’m Logan by the way though I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.” The other agent looks at him in confusion, he can feel the look even though he can’t see it. “Rick; and why? What you just did was unheard of, no one’s been able to get a reaction out of that skip outside of getting their face shredded. Director Carter or at the very least Doctor Lee will want to talk to you.”

Logan makes a face of his own, great interviews before being amnestisized, though this might be the one way he can keep his job and continue trying to protect people. He turns towards the sound of the closing doors the instinct to look back still fresh though useless, maybe protect people who no one else has. After a moments hesitation he takes the arm offered and follows Rick back to medical.


End file.
